During this year when we are recalling the foundation of the Mercy Order 180 years ago and the death of Catherine ten years after that, we in South Central Province found ourselves remembering and celebrating some very significant events: golden jubilees of a number of secondary schools in Dublin and of the Catherine McAuley Special school in Limerick. 1961 also saw the opening of the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire. It is one hundred and fifty years since Coláiste Mhuire in Ennis opened its doors and 1861 was the year of the founding of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin. The secondary school in Naas decided to celebrate on the occasion of its 75th birthday, with some of the first students who enrolled present to recall the story.

It is music to our ears to hear many people acknowledge the extraordinary contribution that the Sisters who went before us made to Irish society. Telling the stories of the beginnings invites us to appreciate the love, the generosity, the courage and the faith of those innovators and those who supported them in more difficult times. We know that there was great sacrifice involved, a stretching of resources and a lot of risk-taking too. We thank God for all the good that was achieved through the institutions that we founded and staffed during that era when that was the appropriate way to meet the needs. We thank God also for the way in which we adapted to meeting new needs in new ways over the years.

Catherine McAuley School, Limerick

But we cannot stop at looking back in admiration and gratitude. May there be a new energy from the celebration of past heroism. Even in our relatively well off society the sense of misery is fairly pervasive and the need to show compassion is as great as ever it was. There is a helplessness and a hopelessness following the optimism and perhaps the pride we have shown in recent years. There is real poverty, very real hardship, with charitable groups such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society not having the resources to meet growing urgent needs. What is our special corporate Mercy response to be in these bewildering times? How does the fire, the daring to be different, the counter-cultural stance that we have honoured in our celebrating of past initiatives find expression today?

Addressing a conference on the future of Religious Life in Indiana on September 24th of this year Sandra Schneiders spoke confidently of the thousands of Religious who were still ‘promoting the reign of God with all the energy of their lives’. May our looking back to the past and our opening of our eyes in the present fire us with new enthusiasm to walk the way of mercy and compassion.

Peggy Collins rsm
Provincial Leader
South Central Province